Me, in passing to a group of friends chatting:
“It’s like my ADD meds aren’t working for like a week every month now?
… But it isn’t really a month,
…more like every 3 weeks.
…And why do I feel so crappy and bloated at the same time?
…And HORNY?!!!”
At that moment Dani, a cherubic faced boy scout of a trans man, squares off to me putting both his hands up on my shoulders, and does his best transgender dysphoria support dog impression on me. Silently, patiently, staring deep into my eyes to give me a moment.
The moment passes.
He looks even more earnestly at me and says, “It’s a full moon?” And resumes staring at me encouragingly …and stares …and stares.
I feel like he’s willing my hair, by the roots, to become a smarter shade of blonde so I’ll see the obvious that I’m currently oblivious to. It seems ages, but really it’s only a few seconds. And suddenly! Old thinking gives way to new; I realize the common denominator amongst the others staring back at me in the circle with broad smiles and raised eyebrows.
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“Oh.” I say finally, the synapses going off with a pop like a strawberry blonde EzBake oven, “…Oh?…OOOH?!”…Really?!!!”
My eyes wide with astonishment. A softness overtakes the atmosphere as the girls and Dani, full of compassion, stare back at me nodding reassuringly.
“Wow!…Neat!…But? …I mean?…”
My eyes are welling up with tears. He shrugs his shoulders and smiles. It doesn’t matter. The trans body, the transformation body, a womon’s body, ovaries or not, awakens to the pull of the moon just the same. Even in a 50 year old going through second puberty.
Call it what you want, but it’s another milestone in this journey of transition; a signal that things are continuing to change on a far more fundamental level than society ever seems willing to admit. And it is just as awkward as you would think. It’s a very vulnerable space to find yourself in. I’m sometimes tempted to look around quickly for a lurking crocodile or lion, out of fear that David Attenborough is following me with a film crew; narrating things like I was a baby gnu taking it’s first steps. We all know what happens to those when he’s around?
You see, these are small moments in transjoy that mark our lives, just like any other womon’s. Albeit in slightly different ways than you’re maybe used to -Or we were used to for that matter! But I think we can grow and change as a society by sharing these moments of intimacy a little more widely. My hope is that we can see the ‘OK-ness’ in them. See them for these sometimes touching, sometimes awkward, sometimes painful moments and see them for exactly what they are; ordinary, common, relatable. Like the fact that I what I really want right now is chocolate ice cream and a hot water bottle delivered by cabana boy -Stat!- while I ugly cry watching Barbie for the 10th time.
Where some people see imagined monsters they want to shove in a darkened closet, I only see friends, family, and loved ones. People who have attempted to become the self they always knew was there. They do this in the harsh light of reality, without an instruction manual, often without elders and peers, and build lives centered on what becomes a deep understanding, and a constant questioning, of what this very notion of self is. They are remarkable and courageous people.
While the human body and brain are wildly more malleable than most cis people can comprehend, there are also certain things which, like the pull of the moon on a womon’s body, simply cannot be ignored. At some point I found that inside and outside were not in accord; the water and moon were at odds. In transition, the moon took over and awakened the tide in me.
Transition takes real guts; for a great many of us older folks that’s born out of a lot of pain, suffering, loss and shame. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And it shouldn’t be that way. A small solution to that starts, to my thinking at least, by humanizing trans people like myself through sharing those little common touchstone moments. So that when it comes to opening the door, you can see the human being I can now see in the mirror, instead of the monster someone told you to see in darkness, and that I was told I was, when I lived in that dark closet.
We are all womyn in the light of the moon.
